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Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Let Russia Be Russia. By Shlomo Ben-Ami. Project Syndicate, December 9, 2014.Ben-Ami:TEL
AVIV – In his famous “X” article, published in 1947, George F. Kennan argued
that the Soviet Union’s hostility toward the United States was virtually
inexorable, given that it was rooted not in a classic conflict of interest
between great powers, but in a deep-seated nationalism and insecurity. The same
could be said of the current conflict between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the
West: It is, at root, a collision between the West’s supposedly universal
values and Russia’s quest for a distinct identity.

A
country’s struggle for identity can shape its strategic behavior. The
missionary ethos of American civilization helps to explain its conduct as a
global power. The resurgence of Islamism is essentially a quest for a
fulfilling identity by an ancient civilization overwhelmed by the challenges of
modernity. And Israel’s emphasis on its Jewish identity has become a formidable
obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.

Putin’s
defiant foreign policy is a response – mediated by an authoritarian political
tradition, the reactionary tenets of Orthodox Christianity, and pride in
Russia’s vast geography and natural wealth – to the humiliating loss of an
empire. Seeing in Russia’s Cold War defeat the need to extol the non-Western
roots of Russian history and tradition, Putin has fallen back on the same
conservative values that emerged in response to the Napoleonic invasion of
1812, frustrating Peter the Great’s modernization efforts.

When
the deputy head of the presidential administration, Vyacheslav Volodin, said
during a recent Valdai Discussion Club meeting in Sochi that “Putin is Russia
and Russia is Putin,” he was expressing a profound Russian reality. In no other
country has the ruler’s persona – from Catherine the Great and Ivan the
Terrible to Lenin and Stalin – made such a deep mark on national history.

But
Putinism cannot be reduced to sheer lust for power. Putin knows that Russia’s
reemergence on the global stage must be underpinned by a counterpoint to
American exceptionalism, a national identity based on a distinct conception of
history and distinct ideals.

As
Putin declared last year, the Soviet Union’s collapse dealt a “devastating blow” to Russia’s “cultural and spiritual codes,” and subsequent “attempts to
civilize Russia from abroad” amounted to “primitive borrowing.” Instead of
expecting a new national ideology to emerge on its own, Russia must pursue and
develop its unique identity – with Putin leading the way.

Securing
a place for Russia in a new world order is integral to establishing such an
identity. To this end, Putin has maximized the foreign-policy value of Russia’s
vast oil and gas reserves, enabling the Kremlin to build partnerships with
rising Asian powers, especially China. If, as some Russian officials have
proposed, Russia begins an identity-defining large-scale project to develop its
immense territory east of the Ural Mountains, including Siberia and the Far
East, it would have a unique opportunity to deepen these connections further.

More
broadly, Putin’s defiance of US hegemony could attract support from countries
and peoples worldwide that resent American-imposed values and norms. Indeed,
for many international actors, Western notions of tolerance and political
correctness – for example, acceptance of “non-traditional lifestyles,” such as
homosexuality – are, in Putin’s words, an affront to the world’s “God-given
diversity.”

But
Putin is not merely preaching values. The annexation of Crimea and continuing
destabilization of Ukraine advance his broader ambition of resurrecting
Russia’s cultural and political dominance in Eurasia and much of the former
Soviet space. In Putin’s view, the 1945 Yalta Agreement, which divided Europe
into Soviet and Western spheres of influence, did not die; its borders simply
moved eastward.

Tellingly,
following a discussion of numerous global challenges at the recent Valdai
meeting, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov identified a demonstration by ethnic
Russians in Chișinău (Kishinev), Moldova’s capital, as the “most important
question” to be addressed. Putin’s Russia is anything but shy when it comes to
ethnic unity.

Of
course, the West – particularly the US – bears its share of responsibility for
the failure to find a diplomatic solution to the current showdown with Russia.
Before a lasting peace can be achieved, the US will need to reflect on the
mistakes that characterized its post-Cold War period of hegemony, when its
unilateral military adventures and neo-imperial ambitions left it
overstretched, highly indebted, and locked in perpetual war.

Without
such introspection, the US and its European allies will probably continue to
depend on economic sanctions to deter Russian aggression. But, though this
approach could weaken Putin’s legitimacy by limiting his ability to deliver
economic prosperity, it could also result in an anti-Western nationalist
backlash. Moreover, as Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov has shown, sanctions
can be presented as a blessing, forcing the Kremlin to diversify Russia’s
commodities-based economy.

National
identities cannot be negotiated away; but diplomacy can dilute their aggressive
manifestations. It is time for Russian and Western leaders to devise a grand
bargain for peace in eastern Ukraine, one that goes beyond the Minsk Protocol
to address the questions of global security and arms control that have impeded
cooperation on issues like Syria’s civil war and Iran’s nuclear program.Russia
does not need to upend the existing global order; it simply needs to find its
place. And the US must let it.